My chest and shoulder numb, I went to the Marriot as Dave instructed. I looked down on the Danube and watched the sun set behind the Buda citadel. I sipped brandy and ate perhaps the best cheesecake ever.
I've often wondered if the ink was drugged, if it contained some type of psychotropic that slowly releases a hallucinogen each time I set eyes upon it. Because the ink still writhes, the lotus still blooms, it still brings me calm, wellbeing.
I haven't been anxious since, about the world, traveling, about myself. Up to that point in my life, I was a wanderer in search of myself. Anika revealed to me that I was always in there, beneath the flesh. She drew it out from the inside.
I've often thought I'd return to that underground arcade in Budapest. But twenty some years have passed, and I never have, and I'd bet I couldn't find it if I tried. I don't have the map, and part of me believes that wouldn't matter. It seemed a place out of time, another reality.
So many have tattoos now but I've never met another with a tattoo of living ink. At a glimpse, across a crowded room, in a split second from the corner of my eye, I've thought I saw dark ink ripple. But it never moves on a second glance.
Other nights, when I've drunk more than I should, I scour the internet searching for her, Anika, others who may've met her, may have a similar tattoo. There are occasional mentions of living tattoos, but they're never like Kiwi Dave's or mine. And there is never a mention of her, by the name of Anika or any other, the artist with the de-fingered hand.
About the Author
Daniel Arthur Smith is the author of the international bestsellers HUGH HOWEY LIVES, THE CATHARI TREASURE, THE SOMALI DECEPTION, and a few other novels and short stories.
He was raised in Michigan and graduated from Western Michigan University where he studied philosophy, with focus on cognitive science, meta-physics, and comparative religion. He began his career as a bartender, barista, poetry house proprietor, teacher, and then became a technologist and futurist for the Fortune 100 across the Americas and Europe.
Daniel has traveled to over 300 cities in 22 countries, residing in Los Angeles, Kalamazoo, Prague, Crete, and now writes in Manhattan where he lives with his wife and young sons.
For more information, visit
www.danielarthursmith.com
Rudy and Deidre
by Robb Grindstaff
Summary: A shorter than average man admires a taller than average woman from afar.
Rudy reached to slip two quarters into the slot and pushed the button. He hated when the only dryer available was on the top row. Three dryers on the bottom row sat unmoving, full of dry clothes whose owner was probably at the pub across the street. He considered pulling out the laundry and tossing it on the folding table, but that would be rude and might attract attention from the clothes' owner. Perhaps some big guy who wouldn't take too kindly to having his clean clothes handled by a stranger.
Rudy's clothes slowly picked up tumble speed as the lower dryer stared at him. Full of pinks and powder blues and maroons, lace and frills.
Thank goodness I didn't handle some girl's stuff.
He'd just gotten comfortable–as comfy as you can get in a molded plastic chair at a laundromat just off campus at eleven p.m.–earbuds in, a Dr. Who episode on the tablet, when she ducked in.
Deidre. In a knee-length, modest but form-fitting black dress, make-up, jewelry. And white tennis shoes.
Rudy stared momentarily, then forced his gaze back to the tablet, but shifted slightly in his seat to keep her in his peripheral vision as she headed to the dryer. He pulled out the earbuds in case she spoke to him. A futile exertion, he knew, but hope springs eternal.
Hope had bubbled in Rudy for his three years at the university, ever since he'd first spotted Deidre standing out among the crowd of somewhat shell-shocked freshmen. She hadn't noticed him then or after. She wouldn't notice him in the laundromat either.
At six feet seven, a trim two hundred or so pounds, Deidre was what Rudy would call a big girl. Perfectly proportioned. Stunning beauty.
The three dryers full of her clothes lay still, taunting her with promises of wrinkles.
Deidre hadn't thought the audition would take that long. They never did. But tonight she had to wait while a dozen other hopeful Juliets read before her.
She pulled each article from the dryer and shook it twice, folded it neatly and stacked it on the table. Some were okay. Some would need to be ironed. If only someone else had been in the laundromat, some decent, honest person, an elf maybe, who would have grabbed her clothes the moment the dryer stopped and folded them for her. But no elves were to be found, so she shook the t-shirt three times before folding.
Deidre had always wanted to be an actress. She'd worked the stage lights for high school plays because she knew no teenage boy would want to appear on stage with her.
She majored in drama at the local university, where all the professors raved about her remarkable talents, the way she threw her entire being into the roles, the way her face transformed into whatever character she brought to life. Each time she sent in a video audition, she received a call. When she showed up, before reading a single line, the silhouettes one-third of the way back in the empty auditorium would gasp, sigh, and attempt to cough over an escaped chuckle.
"You're a lovely girl, dear," one would say, "but you're not quite what we had in mind for this part. Thank you for coming."
On her way off stage, the suppressed giggles would turn to guffaws. Even then, she wouldn't slump her shoulders.
"Stand up straight and keep your shoulders back," her mother always chided. "Keep your chin up and your eyes straight ahead. Look where you're going, not at where you are." Her mother's posture lessons made sure Deidre never hunched over in shame of her height or her breasts.
Deidre opened the second dryer and pulled out the delicate items, washed and dried on gentle cycle and low heat.
Rudy tried to act interested in his video or the news or a book–whatever was on his tablet that he wasn't seeing–while keeping Deidre just in his scope. If she looked his way, he would glance up and smile, maybe say hi, ask if she remembered him from first-year English composition.
Or he could just speak up and say, "Hi, Deidre. I'm Rudy. You were in my comp class a couple of years ago. It's good to see you again."
But she hadn't seen him when she walked in, so that might startle her. In this neighborhood at this time of night, her senses were likely heightened anyway. Only, if she was that aware of her surroundings, wouldn't she have noticed a guy sitting against the wall not twenty feet away? She might notice some other guy, Rudy grudgingly accepted, but she wouldn't notice him even if he was the only man in the room.
He was. And she hadn't.
He tried hard not to stare as she folded pink and powder blue and maroon bras and bikini panties.
With the last pair of jeans from the third dryer folded, she wiped a tear on her sleeve and set the stack of clean clothes in the plastic wicker basket.
"Good lord, but I'd like to mount that," she'd overheard the voice from the audience say as she left the stage. He probably thought she had left, but she stood behind the curtains, slipping off her high heels and into more comfortable shoes for the walk back to get her laundry. The acoustics in the hall were incredible.
"You'd need ropes and a grappling hook," said the female silhouette.
All she'd ever really wanted was to play Juliet. She'd memorized all the lines by third grade, but Shaquille was never available as Romeo.
She shifted her basket to one arm and opened the door, catching it with her heel and shoving it open wide enough to exit.
Deidre was out by the time Rudy thought to jump up and ask, "Can I get that for you?" He watched her elegant stride across the parking lot and down the sidewalk in tennis shoes and a not-so-little black dress, carrying a load of fresh clothes. He stared until she disappeared around the corner.
At five-three, Rudy wished he could throw Deidre in the dryer for a while t
o shrink her down to a size where she'd notice him.
About the Author
For the past three decades, Robb Grindstaff has managed newspapers from Japan to Germany, from Washington, D.C., to small towns in North Carolina and Texas. The variety of places he has lived and traveled provide the settings, people, and ideas for most of his character-driven writing. He has published two novels with Evolved Publishing, a dozen or so short stories in collections, anthologies, and magazines, including the award-winning "Desert Rain" in Horror Bound magazine. His fiction editing clients include traditionally published, agented authors as well as award-winning and best-selling indie authors. His articles on the craft of fiction have appeared in international writer magazines and websites, and became the basis for a presentation at the Sydney Writers Festival in Australia.
He now manages a publishing company with fifteen newspapers plus websites, magazines, and specialty publications. He and Linda, his wife of 30 years, live in the countryside not far from Madison, Wisconsin, along with their somewhat neurotic but lovable dog Cera.
Daedalus' Daughter
by P.K. Tyler
Summary: After her father's death, Isha begins sprouting feathers.
The first feather appeared the morning of my father's funeral. It sprouted on my shoulder, soft and white. Its appearance happened quietly, a slow creep of his past into my present. It grew to half an inch before I noticed and plucked it from my skin. It came out with a hard wiry quill which had been seated deep within my flesh.
A drop of blood appeared on my shoulder where I'd pulled it loose.
I tucked it away and left it behind, along with all my unshed tears. I couldn't bring myself to mourn for him, the man I'd only known as Father. Never Dad or Daddy. No kind words or paternal comfort had ever passed between us. I lived in the shadow of his loss, never knowing how warm the sun would feel on my skin.
When I arrived at the funeral home, I went straight to the front and sat next to my mother. Her hands clenched a picture in her lap and her chin tipped up, keeping the sagging skin of her neck taut, the fog behind her eyes was thick with tears.
"How are you, Mom?" I placed a hand on her knee to draw her attention, but she ignored me, lost in a maze of grief. The nurses from the hospice had brought her earlier, giving her time to acclimate before anyone else arrived.
"Hello, Isha," the funeral director held out his hand for me to shake. "I'm so very sorry for your loss."
"Thank you." I stood and took the man's hand, frustrated by his weak grip and sympathetic smile. His brown suit hung a little too loose and his tie hugged his neck in a perfect knot. Everything about him was orchestrated to put me at ease. But he didn't know I wasn't really there, just a mirage, a reflection on the water of my life. I soared above it all, golden and free, watching with uninterested apathy as my family shrank yet again.
"Is there anything special you'd like me to say other than what we discussed on the phone?" His tone attempted to sooth my rough edges, factory designed to calm.
"No, thank you."
Next to me, my mother whimpered, a single tear running down her cheek. "My boy, so young, so brave. How could I lose you?"
A nurse rushed over and placed a soothing hand on her shoulder, knowing better than I did how to ease her pain.
I ignored her.
The funeral hall remained empty until well after the time the service had been set to start. Finally, the director said a few non-committal words about life well lived and how all things have their time. A time for living and a time for dying and all that. I waited for the hours to pass so I could walk away and leave all this wasted time behind. Would anyone even notice? Would my mother remember my name?
No body rested peacefully at the front of the room, painted up to a mock flush of life for mourners to wish farewell of its journey, my father had been cremated, burnt to ash before I even had the chance to see him. I'd like to think I'd have been able to have a last moment with him, a connection, some kind of acceptance as he passed on to the next life. But even that hope was robbed from me by his heartless efficiency.
By the time the hospital called to tell me he'd passed, they had already executed his dying wish and rushed him to the crematorium to be burnt at daybreak.
When the funeral director finished, I waited for my mother's keeper to shepherd her away before retrieving the urn.
She didn't take my hand or press a kiss to my cheek. "I'll see you after school, Isha," she called, waving goodbye. Perhaps that was better for her, to not remember, to not have to melt under the harsh light of reality.
On her seat remained the picture she'd held.
I picked it up and stared down at the memory she clung to: my father and brother, the summer he died. They lounged on the dock, my brother's smile bright as the sun. Was it from the same trip he drowned in that very water in the early morning light?
I wished I remembered him, then maybe I could mourn him and forgive my parents. But I was only three when he died. Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, I could hear his laughter, but it disappeared as soon as I tried to hear it again.
I shoved the picture into my purse and walked out of the funeral home, my father's urn in my arms, my brother's memory nipping at my heels, my mother's sanity lost long ago.
The urn didn't fit on the shelf in the closet where I'd planned to keep it, so instead it sat on my mantle: a cliché out of a movie or some mockery of my lack of mourning.
How could I mourn? I wasn't even in the picture.
"Is this what you want?" I asked the porcelain vase, scratching my shoulder. "Even after death, you'll shadow my life, never speaking to me or caring that I'm the one still alive?"
The urn remained silent.
I turned my back on it and retreated to the bedroom, refusing to engage in another one-sided conversation with my father in death as I had in life.
As I undressed, my sweater caught on my shoulder and a stabbing pain ran through my arm. I reached back to find three small white feathers resting soft against my upper arm. I ran the tips of my fingers over them, so soft and silken. When I pressed against them, I felt a current run down the quill, connected to my nerves.
I considered plucking them, but couldn't bear to. Their beauty existed despite the strangeness. I needed a little beauty, something precious just for me
White and pure, they grew from my flesh in defiance of nature.
They were mine.
After my mother's death, I quit my job and took my parents' matching urns to the cabin I'd inherited. Shuttered since my brother drowned, it had been waiting for someone to return. Like me, it'd been locked in the memory of death. It seemed only right that I bury my parents' remains here.
I drove north, all my earthly possessions in my car or the trailer I'd bought cheap for the trip. I'd inherited their land, their money, their misery. I was all that remained. And I intended to exhume it all.
The small cabin sat on the water in Trescott, Maine, just north of Acadia National Park, and the woman who managed the land for my family owned a small bookstore in town. When I entered, the scent of well loved paper and dust wafted around me and a large three-legged dog bounded to greet me. It had white and brown curly hair and bright black eyes.
"That's Cerberus," a man with a cane announced as he entered. The dog lay at my feet and rolled over, expecting the obligatory belly rub.
I bent to pet the animal. "He hardly acts like a Cerberus."
"Well, you know, three heads, three legs, what's the difference, really?" The man rapped his cane on the ground and the dog left me to sit by his master's feet.
"I'm looking for Betty," I said standing.
"You must be Isha. Betty said you were coming by. Been a long time since we heard from your family."
"The cabin wasn't their highest priority."
"Well, I can understand, after what happened." The man shook his head and frowned. Even here, the memory of my brother darkened the air. "Come on then, I've got your keys and Betty had
her boy Minh go up the other day to check things out."
I followed the man and his dog back through two more book covered rooms. This seemed less a book store and more a hoarder's wet dream. Books stacked on top of one another reached almost to the ceiling, shelves split small spaces even smaller and every available corner was filled.
We reached a back room which appeared identical to the others, except for a desk in the middle of the room. Papers cluttered the surface, but, interestingly, it lacked the presence of books. The man reached into the top drawer and pulled out a key. "Minh opened the place up for you. He made sure all the lights and plumbing still work and replaced one window which must have been broken during the last storm. We'll send a bill for the work and all that to the management company like usual—"
"Actually, I'm going to be moving in, so send it to me directly."
The man frowned and wrapped his age spotted fingers around the key. "So you won't be needing us to look after it anymore?"
"Oh, no, I will. Please, just send the monthly bill to me and I'll pay you directly."
"We don't do much you know, just keep the road clear and cut the grass some so it don't overgrow. Make sure no one sets up on your land for squatting."
"I'll still need the help, I'm sure. I've only ever lived in the city, so clearing the drive and fixing things around the place will be a huge help." I smiled, trying to reassure him that his income remained secure. It wasn't much but knowing someone would be checking on me made the idea of moving out to nowhere a little less terrifying.
UnCommon Bodies: A Collection of Oddities, Survivors, and Other Impossibilities (UnCommon Anthologies Book 1) Page 23
